Sunday, November 17, 2013

Climate Scientists as Psychohistorians

The current state of affairs in Australia - where we have a government that refuses to accept the scientific evidence of climate change, that undermines that science and climate scientists whenever it can, and that is now dismantling the only proven method to effectively manage carbon emissions - made me think of a scientist who presented his government with another inconvenient truth.

The great psychohistorian Hari Seldon, from Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, used his science to predict that Trantor, the seat of galactic government, would fall and that the fall was inevitable, but that he and his fellow scientists could work to mitigate the effects of that fall on the population of the empire.

The government, like all governments and most particularly our current government, preferred to do nothing.

Chen said, ‘Dr Seldon, you disturb the peace of the
Emperor’s realm. None of the quadrillions living now among all the stars of the
Galaxy will be living a century from now. Why, then should we concern ourselves
with events of five centuries distance?’

‘I shall not be alive half a decade hence,’ said Seldon,
‘and yet it is of overpowering concern to me. Call it idealism. Call it an
identification of myself with that mystical generalisation to which we refer by
the term “man”.’

‘I do not wish to take the trouble to understand mysticism.
Can you tell me why I might not rid myself of yourself and an uncomfortable and
unnecessary five-century future which I will never see by having you executed
tonight?’

‘A week ago,’ said Seldon, lightly, ‘you might have done so
and perhaps retained a one in ten probability of yourself remaining alive at
year’s end. Today, the one in ten probability is scarcely one in ten thousand.

‘How so?’ he said.

‘The fall of Trantor,’ said Seldon, ‘cannot be stopped by
any conceivable effort. It can be easily hastened, however. The tale of my
interrupted trial will spread through the Galaxy. Frustration at my plans to
lighten the disaster will convince people that the future holds no promise to
them. Already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy. They
will see that political revolutions and trade stagnations will increase. The
feeling will pervade the Galaxy that only what a man can grasp for himself at
that moment will be of any account. Ambitious men will not wait and
unscrupulous men will not hang back. By their every action they will hasten the
decay of their worlds. Have me killed and Trantor will fall not within five
centuries but within fifty years and you, yourself, within a single year.’

Climate change is real. And the Direct Action policy will do nothing to meet the challenge of climate change. Do we really have to hope there's a wily Hari Seldon in amongst all the climate scientists who can bend the government's intransigence to his own ends in order to save humanity?

Mailing List Pop-Up

SF quotes

"the Culture had placed its bets—long before the Idiran war had been envisaged—on the machine rather than the human brain. This was because the Culture saw itself as being a self-consciously rational society; and machines, even sentient ones, were more capable of achieving this desired state as well as more efficient at using it once they had. That was good enough for the Culture."— Iain M. Banks